Sooner or Later
October 11, 2009
Listening to Ariana Huffington this morning, I could hear my own thoughts echoing across the air waves. Ms. Huffington, while not as verbally abusive as myself, managed to state, very simply, the challenges that face Mr. Obama. In order to save our economy and health care and to preserve the safety of our country, the President must confront the very power of the lobbies in Washington.
This is no longer that “same old story.” The Wall Street lobby, after causing a national and world wide financial crisis, manages to bribe both President Bush’s and Obama’s cabinets and a weak kneed Democratic led Congress into blatant bailouts for Goldman Sachs, AIG and the Banking community. There is no bailout for the lobbyless working man (this obviously excludes many mindless unions) nor for the small businesses who still cannot borrow money.
Healthcare reform will remain a sham as long as drug companies, durable goods and oxygen companies, as well as laboratories, can feed huge bribes called “campaign contributions” to both Republican and Democratic whores. As long as an arrogant, but “retarded,”* legal aristocracy is permitted to ignore our Constitution, there will be no progress in the area of public health.
Consider, again, the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal,” it states. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution also ensures “equal protection of due process” for all. Republicans, in fashioning Medicare Part D, purposely forbade competitive bidding using the 43 million Medicare members. So Billy Tauzin and his Congressional cohorts took millions of dollars, both in campaign funds and personally in exchange for purposely violating the 14th Amendment. Where I come from (the however inadequate American Primary and Secondary school system), this is “Quid Pro Quo” and a purposeful violation of civil rights. Even the constitutionally illiterate Supreme Court should be able to see this, without involving the first amendment excuse that paying a politician to violate the law is included in Free Speech.
You see, venerable judges and even Mr. Abrams of the ACLU, it may well be that those lobbies have committed no crime by bribing Congressmen and Senators, however, taking the bribes in order to clearly and purposely violate American citizens’ civil rights, that is a crime. That is a crime! I, for one, demand, as every citizen should demand, prosecution!
Unfortunately, senior citizens are easy to discriminate against. They have already been robbed of their Social Security Fund. Pseudo conservatives (to be distinguished from legitimate conservatives who are plentiful, but all too quiet these days) would blame them for the inordinate expenses involved in Medicare. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans seem to have any realistic intention of cleaning up Medicare- that would take complete cleansing of lobbies from the system. Neither Congress nor the President seem serious in this issue, but somehow with gutless compromise, we will slowly muddle through health care, I believe.
The real challenge has to do with Afghanistan and our entire foreign policy. Mr. Obama faces the same adversary, here, too. It is not the Taliban that is the real threat in that little hell hole of a country, it is the “Military Industrial Complex” that Eisenhower so wisely warned us about. I have no doubt that General McCrystal feels the only way to deal with Afghanistan is through more aggression. His job is to win wars, not to read history. Never mind that every incursion into Afghanistan has ended in bankruptcy (the Soviets) or great loss of money and honor. Mr. Obama’s job, until he became a Senator, was to read history. Obviously, there was no reason to attack this horrible little country and, now, there is no reason to stay. We have already lost plenty of money and plenty of honor. Forty thousand more troops represent more violation of civil rights: payment by those same Military Industrialists (lobbies) to Congressmen, ex-generals, and colonels (and maybe some current ones) to continue useless wars simply for their profit.
There will be no punishment for Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, thousands of carpetbaggers, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other profiteers who designed the useless attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. They all did this for the same reason. “Free Money.” The “Free Money System,” designed by Milton Friedman (actually “coalesced” by the man) is the root of the problem. Instead of the “Free Market” regulating itself (it is still a legitimate theory), what we have had since the end of the Clinton Administration is actually “regulation” enabling things that would never happen, normally.
Who would be stupid enough to trust Goldman Sachs or AIG or any investment company to buy, say, oil futures almost totally (95%) on credit. Government has to step in and encourage this. The government has to give “free” tax money to Halliburton in Iraq to ensure that very little oil is sold in the “Free Marketplace.” The government has to give carpetbaggers 10 times what it pays soldiers for doing the soldier’s job. This is “free money.” It is not earned. No-bid contracts are extended to Blackwater to murder and frame innocent Iraqis, i.e. “free money.” Any excuse was used by the Bush Administration, Cheney and Rumsfeld, to give “free money” to their friends and themselves. Why give them more “free money” in Afghanistan?
We are supposed to be a country of “law,” based on “equity” and “fairness.” This is already no longer the case. Courts should never be allowed to choose when to apply or to whom they apply our Constitutional law, but how to do it equitably. The “new aristocracy,” those above the law, will be dealt with sooner or later. History promises this. The question that Ms. Huffington is hesitant to ask is whether this will be done, hopefully, “sooner” by legal means or “later,” God forbid, by violent means.
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.
*“retarded” as used in the unfortunate term “retarded Christian,” not to the mentally handicapped who have no choice in the matter.